I am thinking to buy Plex Lifetime Pass just for Plex Cloud, but is it worth it ?
My current setup: I have PMS server at home. Everything works great, load fast, no buffer, can transcode 3-4 media. My internet upload speed is bad so watching high bitrate 1080p movies outside my house is a bit of a pain, lags, buffer, no reliable skipping etc. Other than this, the other problem is electric bill of running 24/7 PMS as electric is expensive in my country.
Assuming I will host my media in Google Drive and assuming that Plex the company will stay solvent for the next 5 years, Plex Lifetime seems affordable solution.
But is it reliable?
When using Plex Cloud does it buffer much? lags? reliable fast-forward/rewind?
Is it good/reliable enough for Library that has around 5000 videos complete with metadata ?
My internet is 100Mbps down and from phones/tablets I have 4G. and my media is mostly X264 and X265 8 bit ready for viewing in phones without transcoding.
I do NOT think that Plex Cloud is a reasonable alternative to Plex locally mainly because cloud storage is insecure and you have to store all your video and audio and pictures unencrypted and for most people it is more expensive long term to store in the cloud than locally with how cheep hard drives have become.
That is to say nothing of the unrelibility of Plex Cloud because it is so dependent on systems that the user has zero control over.
I have a lifetime Plex Pas but it has nothing to do with Plex Cloud.
If you are really considering Plex cloud I would recommend going monthly for a month or two to test it before investing in lifetime.
well, the thing with the cloud will be depend of your host, so if you don’t have enough space in cloud you have to buy also more space, i have plex pass for trailers, sync, family and to support the soft …etc, maybe someone that use cloud can give you more info, i don’t use cloud because only GOOGLE DRIVE, DropBox and OneDrive
My biggest issue is that the files are not encrypted, just as @Elijah_Baley stated in his post. In addition to that, there are issues with large libraries being up there (scans cause the hosts to freeze the account due to bandwidth limits being reached, the huge amount of time it takes to upload all of the media) that I, quite frankly, don’t want to deal with.
@raditokyo said:
OK fair points. Assuming I have no problem uploading my media to Google Drive and leave it there unencrypted, is Plex Cloud server reliable enough?
Anyone who use Plex Cloud server as their main server with huge library in Google Drive?
Any issues ?
I’m having issues, and unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much support available:
For many of us Plex Cloud works brilliantly well. However a subset of users consistently have problems which points to some local issue with their Cloud storage location or file naming or ISP or peering/routing or WiFi performance. Unfortunately for those who have a bad experience troubleshooting is difficult & fixing the problem well nigh impossible.
If Plex Cloud works for you like it does for me then it’s fantastic but if it doesn’t then unfortunately you are SOL so before buying a Lifetime subscription specifically for Plex Cloud you should really do some testing. However once you have all your media in the Cloud (I recommend unlimited storage on Google Drive with G Suite for Business at $10/month or equivalent in local currency) then it’s easy enough to rent a VPS to either use because Plex Cloud doesn’t work for you or as a backup in case of any hiccoughs with Plex Cloud. If your Plex client can Direct Play your media then a really low powered Linux Box for $2-3/month will suffice but if you are transcoding & you don’t want to get your hands dirty with Linux admin then a dedicated Plex platform/Seedbox from the like of Bytesized Hosting starting at €12/month for an AppBox +Unmetered makes the whole experience of running a Plex Server in the Cloud really easy. The cost savings in moving to the Cloud are enormous & you never have to worry again about hardware failures or upgrades. If you want your content encrypted then Plex Cloud is not an option but if you host PMS on your own VPS then content can be encrypted.
Spot on, that’s what I thought. I have home plex server, VPS plex server, and my main goal is to retire these by using Plex cloud if Plex Cloud proven reliable enough…
I wish Plex Cloud give you a one day trial where I can index few movies as a test to see the performance.
My collection is 99% ready for Direct Play / Direct Stream for all my clients.
However I start remuxing Blurays I have and put them on Google Drive. This is the big question mark for Plex Cloud, can it handle remuxes and thousands of files.
I’m in in the process of uploading a fairly large library at the moment. There’s an incredible convenience to streaming from the cloud (although it still serves as a backup to my local server). This is especially true for those who’s servers may not be quite as powerful for transcoding purposes.
Performance wise, scans do take a fair bit longer, I haven’t done a lot of extended streaming but media I’ve played so far seems to work well.
My content is unencrypted on gdrive. Wonder do people know whether Google takes a suspicious eye on Plex activity on gdrive?
